Mina Kitty...

Dangers of Having a Photographer as a Dad...

Your faux pas become fodder for memes.

Minions! with a little Star Wars thrown in. (my photography)

FUCKING HELL, I HATE MURPHY!!!

Back in October, I fell ill and ended up being given a prescription of Amoxicillin to combat what the doctor originally thought was acute bronchitis.  Well, evidently that was not the case.  I ended up with a BP over 180/92; nearly thought I was having a cardiac event and headed for the hospital.  After several blood draws and a IV, I was taken in to have a CT scan on my upper chest where they checked my lungs.  It turned out that I had a severe case of bronchial pneumonia which if they didn't hit me with 7 days of Moxifloxacin (or otherwise known as Avelox) I would end up more than likely on a slab.  Definitely not an A-letter day of fun.  I may actually end up with COPD, according to the doctor.

So cue several days after the course of Avelox, I've got patellar tendon pain in my knees; pain in my Achilles tendon and peroneal tendons...and I'm deathly afraid of a tendon rupture, so I've been walking around like an invalid (slowly and in pain), wondering if I should be using a cane to get around.

And then on top of that, I end up with the car's radiator and coolant level dropping to empty and no way that I can physically walk that distance to the Canadian Tire to buy enough coolant to get the car at a running temperature that doesn't exceed 125 degrees.  Did I ever tell you how much I hate that bastard: Murphy?  (If anything can go wrong, it will).

So as a result:  No photography unless it's from the end of my @#$%ing driveway which is as far as I can totter outside.

So no fancy photos like this one...

You just get this boring shot from the road.

There ya go.  Damn...this sucks. 

An Innocent Bank Error? FATCA and Ramifications

Today, an interesting article from Forbes.com came across my screen as I was doing my usual surfing. Bank Error In Your Favor. This struck me for a moment, "Hey, I wouldn't mind having someone inject $50,000.00 in my bank account. However when one looks at it, it's not the happy rosy situation for Americans abroad who are afflicted by FATCA and its reporting requirements. Even a simple mistake can have catastrophic repercussions.

FATCA requires people to report their bank accounts to the Department of Treasury if at any point during any calendar year, the account goes over $10,000.00. So take for example the hypothetical dual border baby who came up to Canada, made a life for herself or himself in Canada, grew up married, had kids, the whole nine yards, all while thinking she was a card carrying citizen of Canada, not knowing that she had the plague that was United States Citizenship like a noose around her neck? So while those of you who are 100% fully Canadian would cheer uproariously to find $50,000 in your bank account; the unknown dual is having a heart-attack, because her operating account just got punched up over ten thousand, all through a simple "bank error".

What happens to her? Well, for one, the IRS pitbulls get a sniff at her. "Oh...you got money over $10,000 in your account, they say. Doesn't matter. Your account was over the limit for 2-3 days. It was technically YOUR money for that time, so you owe Uncle Sam. the taxes on it...as well, since you failed to report it, we're going to ding you with $100,000.00 fine for failure to report it on an FBAR. Considering the fact that it is wilful since you knew that money was there, took steps to figure out where it came from, we'll just classify it as willful, won't we?"

So poor Ms. "I Didn't Know I Was American" gets to undergo FATCA(T) scrutiny just because the bank made a stupid error. Seems rather unfair doesn't it? Unfortunately the IRS and US Department of Treasury doesn't think so.

Will this happen to someone? I'm absolutely sure of it. And when the ramifications of that simple "mistake" on the part of the bank comes out, the American expat ends up losing damned near all their finances thanks to a mistake made on the part of the bank. In that sort of instance, I think the bank should be held liable for the damage done to the person's finances. But unfortunately the courts may not see it that way.

I'm An Introvert And I Don't Like People!

Yep, most people immediately, when they think of an mysanthropic loner, they think of the Unabomber or some psycho who pulls out a gun and shoots up places because he's pissed off at the world. Well, there are those kind of psychos and then there's the people who just find that other people just aren't worth their time to deal with.

I'll admit there's been a few times where a strategically placed fragmentation grenade down their shorts would have been so soul-satisfying as to deal with those irritating assholes who persist in getting in my face, but I'm just not that kind of a person. I'd rather that they remove themselves from that situation and leave me the hell alone. That is not misanthropy. Misanthropy is when you get to the point that someone is wasting the oxygen that some other valuable life-form can breathe and you wish nothing more than to see the annoying person who is wasting that said oxygen remove himself/herself from the homo-sapien gene-pool.

In over four decades of life, I have seen countless people who fit the description of that including members of my own maternal relations (including my own mother) who happen to be abusively pedantic jack-asses. People who have nothing better to do than to spread lies and invective against someone who is minding their own business, just wanting to make their own way in life - the ones who don't get the simple idea of "fuck off and die". Those are the type of people that I hate the most and think that they should become animated dummies at a claymore test-firing range.

Running second on the list are the know-it-alls - the one's who think that they are the be all and end all purveyer of all knowledgeable things and if one doesn't bow down to their supreme Know-It-All-ness that they are to be scorned and ridiculed. A rusty pipe jammed through the ears and rotated inside the cranial passage to effect maximum damage is the best solution that I can come up for those type of people.

Narcissistic Psychopaths pretty much rate the third on the list - The assholes who want attention and don't care how they get it - whether by picking on other people or behaving like idiotic "Haha...you suck, look at me, I want attention" trolls - being strapped to an atomic bomb and vaporized on the White Sands Proving Grounds would be a fitting fate for these aberrations of social society.

What people need to get through their heads is when an introvert says he/she needs downtime, that doesn't mean that you drag him/her to a cocktail party. He/she wants that time alone to recharge and reboot. Given enough time, we'll emerge to socialize for a while. But let us have the time to recharge our batteries or else we turn into something else...

Something you may not like...

LRT: Wrong Choice for Surrey.

Surrey City Hall, regardless of the questions on the plebiscite, is still pushing to link a LRT development plan with the YES vote on advertising for the plebiscite. Those with Better Transit For Surrey would like Surrey City Hall to refrain from linking LRT as a "YES" platform and restrict themselves to voting YES for a better transit system regardless of whether the outcome is Skytrain or some other mode of rapid transit. A plebiscite is supposed to be fair and impartial. Not linking one rapid transit type to a Yes or No vote without consideration for the other side in the matter. In fact, here is absolute proof that they are trying to link the "YES" platform with Light Rail

Such misinformation from the Light Rail for the Lower Mainland group and the highly noted accidents from various LRT systems across North America and Europe will be common-place in Surrey; should the LRT lines go down high-traffic corridors such as Fraser Highway, 104th Avenue and King George Boulevard.

Situations such as this have occured in the Calgary "C" line and are continuing to plague a lot of LRT systems across North America.

And most people in the Lower Mainland are utilizing rapid transit to get to work; most of those employed are employed downtown which means regardless of Mayor Linda Hepner's statements that Skytrain is unsightly and will cut the city in half; it still is the most efficient way of getting downtown. The farther out you go, the travel time grows exponentially. If the LRT is constantly getting clogged down in traffic going towards the Surrey Central location, then it will make it impossible to achieve the commute times that Hepner is stating in her support of LRT. The only way that commute time to downtown will be cut down is to put in a SkyTrain line from Langley to fully connect with SkyTrain at King George Station and make King George a thru-station with the terminus being at Langley Center.

Any other way would be ludicrous. Has Metrotown suffered for not being the terminus point of a LRT line - it's been running on a Skytrain line since 1986 and Metrotown Center has been expanding - they have put in a large condo complex in Metrotown. The Rogers business towers have expanded from one to two to three in the past fifteen years. The entire argument that LRT will slow transit down so that business can grow and citizens can do shopping is laughable.

Transit is primarily so that people who work in the downtown core can live in outlying areas thus decreasing the population density of the downtown core and allowing residents in the downtown area to have some room to breathe.

The Lower Mainland is a metropolis made up of many outlying cities combined together in an urban sprawl. When you look at Google Maps, you will see that Vancouver/Lower Mainland shows up even more clearly on the map than Toronto does. We are socked into a Valley hemmed in by mountains somewhat restricting our growth, whereas Toronto can sprawl out with no mountains in sight. Pretty soon, the only way to go will be up, for Vancouver and those who have chosen to make their homes in places such as Langley will need to be able to count on an efficient grade-separated transit system to be able to get from their places of residence to the downtown core in Vancouver. Right now, the bus system is not cutting it. LRT doesn't take off much time off the bus times with average times being cut off are between 1 and 4 minutes. Whereas SkyTrain would be able to do much better at a constant 80km/hr clip and no traffic lights, minimal stops for Skytrain Stations along the route and it would shave close to 16 to 20 minutes off total commute time.

LRT is the wrong choice for Surrey, but Linda Hepner appears to be hell-bent on pushing that form of "slow"-transit through. I can only hope that people are listening and will oppose LRT because as it stands a 1-4 minute savings in time is not a savings at all. LRT has been proven to be the WRONG CHOICE for Surrey.